The United States and Japanese AmericansThe United States of America has had a rich and complex history that shows a nation in motion, a nation based on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and a nation based on equality before the law and considered the land of opportunity for all. However, these American ideals are not always put into practice, especially when it comes to the treatment of immigrants. Whether these immigrants are Irish, Jewish, Italian, etc., they have not been afforded the same rights and privileges as their American brethren. One such immigrant group that gets overlooked in the discourse on immigrant mistreatment are the Japanese. Although they are often overlooked compared to other immigrant groups, their history reflects the deeply rooted inequality between the so-called American citizen and the Japanese immigrant, as demonstrated by the internment of the Japanese during World War II and the events leading up to it . Perhaps the best place to begin examining American-Japanese immigrant relations is at the beginning. This relationship began shortly after the American Civil War, when the very first Japanese immigrants came to settle in the Gold Hills of California in 1869. Like many other immigrant groups, the Japanese came primarily looking for work because America's reputation is one of opportunity with its slogan "give us your poor, your hungry, and your huddled masses." However, the following year, the United States Congress granted naturalization rights to black and white immigrants, but excluded Asian immigrant groups from those rights, and in 1911, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization continued the actions of Con...... middle of paper ......d Houston, James D. Farewell to Manzanar. New York: Bantam Books, 1973. Japanese Immigration: An Exposition of Its Real Status. Seattle: The Japanese Association of the Pacific Northwest, 1972. Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and accumulation on a global scale. London and New York: Zed Books Ltd., 1998. Miller, Dale T. and Prentice, Deborah A. Cultural Gaps: Understanding and Overcoming Group Conflict. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1999. Nagata, Donna K. Legacy of Injustice. New York and London: Plenum Press, 1993. Peterson, William. Japanese Americans. New York: Random House Inc., 1971. Taylor, Sandra C. Jewel of the Desert: Japanese-American Internment at Topaz. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.Williams, Raymond. Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.